On last day of filing claims against draft Bihar voters’ rolls, BJP submits 16 complaints for exclusion of names

In a surprise development on the last day of filing claims for objections against the draft electoral rolls of Bihar, the BJP till 10 am on Monday had filed 16 claims against exclusion of names from the voters' list under the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) in the state.

The claims filed by the BJP came a day after the opposition Congress on Sunday filed a stupendous 89 lakh complaints of irregularities with the district election authorities of Bihar.

The main charge of the opposition has been that the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been acting as an agent of the ruling BJP by initiating SIR in Bihar, which it has alleged, is aimed at excluding Dalit, poor and migrant voters, which will benefit the BJP.

Interestingly the ECI's bulletin for September 1 showed zero claims filed by the Congress for both inclusion as well as exclusion of names in the draft rolls of Bihar.

The BJP's sudden filing of claims of objections on the very last day of doing so, therefore, comes as an interesting development, as since August 1 (when the month-long window had been opened for filing objections), it had not filed a single complaint with the ECI against the draft rolls.

The Congress had informed mediapersons in Patna on August 31 that contrary to the ECI claims of the opposition (mainly Congress) not coming forward with filing claims of objections against the draft rolls, its workers had in the last couple of days submitted 89 lakh complaints of violations with the poll body.

However, the Congress had alleged that all the claims were rejected by the ECI.

The ECI on its part said the applications were not in proper format and that it will take a call on these complaints as per its discretion.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's Voter Adhikar Yatra is also culminating in Patna on Monday, where he has been highlighting the issue of "vote theft" allegedly by the ruling BJP at the Centre.

Meanwhile, till September 1, as many as 16,56,886 applicants who have turned 18 this year in Bihar, had submitted applications under SIR to be included as voters.

Apart from this, 2,17,049 voters had submitted applications for exclusion of names from the draft electoral rolls of the state, while only 36,475 applications had been received for inclusion of names in the rolls.

Claims received from political parties like CPI(ML) (Liberation) were 103 for exclusion of names while only 15 claims were filed for inclusion of names by it. The RJD has filed only 10 claims for inclusion of names in the electoral rolls of Bihar till September 1.